Dystopian Representations of Surveillance in Little Brother and Nineteen Eighty-Four
Example Assignment: Grade 11 University English (ENG 3U)
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) follows Winston, a worker at the Ministry of Truth for the government of Oceania which has replaced Britain in Orwell’s future world, who eventually comes to reject Big Brother. Big Brother, a symbolic representation of government surveillance, is ‘always watching’ through television screens that are mandatory in every household, as well as other forms of technology. Winston engages in what is considered dissident activity by the government as he falls in love without permit, visits parts of the city where he does not typically belong, and attempts to learn the truth about the history of his society. Winston is eventually caught by Big Brother and tortured into submission, coming to the conclusion in the end that no one can stop it. Cory Doctorow draws from this experience with surveillance in his YASF novel Little Brother (2008), the title being a direct reference to Orwell’s cold-war era text. Similar to Orwell, Doctorow draws from his contemporary experiences with surveillance to inform his text. In Little Brother, the tech-savvy protagonist Marcus is falsely accused of being involved in a terrorist attack on the Bay Bridge by Homeland Security. Drawing from heightened states of security in the US following the attack on the twin towers, Doctorow explores in his near-future novel how liberties are being violated by the government in the name of ‘safety’. Similarities abound in both texts, as Nineteen Eighty-Four and Little Brother both tell the stories of people who acknowledge fundamental moral issues with their governments, who become dissident in hopes of changing their society.
This lesson will take advantage of how rooted in history both Nineteen Eighty-Four and Little Brother are. A part of reading something critically involves being aware of the historical context which informs fiction. As texts which contain dissident figures who respond to their corresponding societies in participatory ways, both novels are useful examples of how people have responded politically to their governments. This lesson will also serve the purpose of teaching students how science fiction texts, while they take place in the future, ultimately mirror the present of the author. In this lesson students will research the historical and political contexts which inspired both novels, considering how both novels differ in their treatment of surveillance culture. The nearness of the future depicted in Little Brother is of particular interest here, as the society which Doctorow writes about alarmingly resembles our own. From this research, students will be asked to discuss as a formative assessment how historical context can shape fiction, particularly SF texts.
Anticipated Time Requirement: This activity will require at least two class periods, one for research and one for discussion. This assignment will provide the teacher with an understanding of how students are making sense of the texts, and what kind of connections they are making between the two. These texts will not be read concurrently. Rather, one will be read in the context of the other, to solidify the connection students make between the two as an ongoing activity without interrupting the flow of the novels.
Expectations Addressed in this Lesson:
| Reading and Literature Studies, Overall Expectations: 1. Reading For Meaning: read and demonstrate an understanding of a variety of literary, informational, and graphic texts, using a range of strategies to construct meaning. |
Works Cited
Doctorow, C. (2008). Little Brother. London: Harper Voyager.
Orwell, George. (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: Signet Classics.
Ontario Ministry of Education. (2007). The Ontario Curriculum Grades 11 and 12: English.
Retrieved from https://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/secondary/english1112currb.pdf
